Celebrating 10 Years of Tugela People

We are thrilled to be celebrating our 10th Anniversary this month, which prompted a reflection of the journey travelled and the road ahead for our organisation and external stakeholders.

When Thomas Schilling first started Tugela People in 2012, it was with the objective of meeting the HR system and HR automation needs of mid-sized multinational companies to improve company outcomes. Having worked in various senior roles within HR for over 20 years, Thomas recognised the need for an HR System that provided these organisations with extensive functionality and the ability to manage multi-country, multi-currency and local requirements. Tugela People was born out of the desire to share his knowledge and experience acquired in successfully scoping, implementing and managing HR systems for companies, empowering them to achieve their companies strategic objectives.

Initially, Tugela People worked as an exclusive partner to Fairsail, having identified the capability of the system to deliver the people-centric functionality that matched the HR needs of mid-sized companies. As a result, Tugela People became the first leading partner for Fairsail, implementing the system in various parts of the globe, including the USA, Africa, Europe and Australia. Within the first five years, Tugela People had implemented a large percentage of the Fairsail client systems globally.

In 2017, Fairsail was purchased by the Sage Group PLC. and rebranded Sage People. However, Tugela People maintained its partnership and remained the only partner dedicated to supporting Sage People implementations.

Tugela People expanded further by establishing two new divisions – Professional Services and Managed Services, which provided Tugela People with the ability to enhance its client’s services of implementation, integration, training, project management and ongoing support (Managed Services).

Initially, Tugela People started working with associates for client implementations and training, and Thomas is immensely grateful for their input during this time. In fact, one of the associates is still working with Tugela People. The company continued to expand and employed its first consultant (who still works for the company today!) within its fifth year of operation.

Over the next 5 to 10 years, Tugela People expanded its system and service offerings by partnering with other organisations, including Brain Payroll for Payroll, Deputy for workforce planning and rostering, and Epignosis with their Learning Management Solution (LMS) TalentLMS.

Latterly, Tugela People have recognised the need to support companies to achieve better outcomes through their people and process enhancement by integrating their systems and automating relevant HR processes. Key partnerships to support this include Integromat (with their iPaaS platform, an automation tool that can help companies set up integrations between programs without knowing any code).

The CIPD recently undertook a study to gather an understanding of what the key trends and drivers might mean for work and the profession, as defined by people professionals themselves. According to the resultant People Profession 2030 report, the key trends that will influence the future of work and how it will affect the profession are:

1. Internal change: evolving organisational models, structures, and processes
2. Digital and technological transformation
3. Changing demographics and D&I strategy
4. Diversifying employment relationships
5. Sustainability, purpose and responsible business.

In terms of these key trends, Tugela People are well-positioned to provide mid-sized organisations with the support to achieve their required digital and technical transformation from an HR perspective. Advancing HR and payroll systems enable people professionals to automate transactional and operational tasks that require less human interaction, which frees up time to undertake more strategic, value-adding work and focus on the more ‘human’ side of their role. The absence of people professionals in the early stages of design and strategic planning around such initiatives risks overlooking people considerations and the impact on employees.

As we move forward with a focus on future technologies, the automation of processes and the integration of systems, we look forward to continuing to provide HR professionals and teams with the tools to impact and help shape the future of their organisations for the better.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our past and present team, customers, partners and industry associates for their support, and we look forward to future collaborations.